Aotearoa / New Zealand

In the beginning, imaging something like the old farming facebook games, except instead of having to wait real-world time you can just go to bed and it's the next day. The initial objective is to grow certain bundles of food to unlock further things in the game.

I wouldn't really call it sandbox, but it is an open world. For the most part you don't have to do anything you don't want to. For example, there's combat if you go in the mines, but if you never want to do combat then you don't have to, there are other ways to get everything. You can run out of time on specific things, but you always get another chance, so it's very chill in that respect.

There are a bunch of NPCs that have their own story arc (including cutscenes), that you unlock by gifting them their favourite foods/items.

It's hard to get a good sense of if you'll like the game without playing it. It seems like it's popular with people who haven't previously been into games, but also with people who have played a lot of games. It has farming, fishing, mining, combat, NPC story arcs, you can customise your house, things are unlocked as you play but there's never any real pressure. You can get married and have kids if you want.

Hard to explain, but it's a pretty sweet game for a one man band. You can also get it on mobile, but as he outsources that it can lag behind the latest release by years (I believe Android got the latest 1.5 update last year, a couple of years after it was released on PC).